There Is No Easy Way Down

How much better would things be without Trump?

Have you found that, no matter what the subject, the emails you receive from people you haven’t spoken to in some time invariably end up at, “So, this is really going to happen, huh? We’re really doing this?” It seems to be the case for so many of us these days. And it’s even worse when you get to the part of the conversation where you both discuss just how many unlikely things would have to happen to take us through the chain of succession until we finally got Kiefer Sutherland as president. There is, unfortunately, no hope. As was explained earlier, things will be bad. As bad as you expect things to get, that is what you are about to at minimum receive. Terrible things will happen and for at least two years — and almost certainly longer — you will have to sit there and watch them happen. But still, maybe the Republicans will impeach Trump?

Sure, there would be some small satisfaction in it and our intense and not entirely unwarranted dread of incineration would be greatly reduced, but guess what:

Republicans would still have two solid years of complete control of the government, only now with a properly conservative and pliant president, in Mike Pence, who will obviously sign anything Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell place on his desk. Even if a conservative grassroots backlash leads to Republican members of Congress losing their seats in 2018, most of them will be replaced with equally conservative Republicans, who will then have another two years to continue to implement the full conservative agenda…. The welfare state will be in ruins, the tax code more regressive than at any point since the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, major industries will be freed from burdensome regulations of their environmentally and socially destructive practices, we’ll probably be at war with Iran, the Supreme Court and the judiciary as a whole will be packed with stalwart young conservatives working tirelessly to eliminate abortion access and make it illegal to sue businesses for poisoning children, America will be a “right to work” nation, and it will be a felony to be rude to a cop.

You’re not going to feel any better if you read this piece, but it is hard to imagine you can feel much worse, so you might as well go ahead and click through.